


Burned Fish and Bread

by Sassydoilies



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Cooking, F/F, Married Couple, Married Life, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 08:46:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13120245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sassydoilies/pseuds/Sassydoilies
Summary: Abigail tries to make a fancy dinner for her wife - and things just don't go right for her.





	Burned Fish and Bread

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write, but didn't know what. So I picked a prompt at random - "Welcome back. Now fucking help me." The result is this little story, which came out a little sweet and romantic, mostly because I adore Abigail.

Abigail was excited – tonight was the first chance she’d get to surprise Lisette with something great and homemade. While they’d been dating, the pretty farmer had given her all sorts of lovely things, and wonderful dishes crafted in this very kitchen.

It wasn’t fair of her to make Lisette do all the cooking, not with how tough the farm work was. So, since the red-haired farmer had left Stardew Valley early that morning to head back to the city for the day, Abigail was determined to have something amazing cooked and ready for her wife when she got back. Lobster bisque, fiddlehead risotto, baked rainbow trout, fresh bread, and a chocolate cake was the planned menu. Ambitious, to be sure, but Abigail was confident in her abilities.

Things started going wrong when she realized the lobster would have to be alive when it went into the pot. It goggled at her with those creepy eyestalks from the sink, and she just . . . couldn’t. She could barely bring herself to wrangle it into a bowl and walk it out to the pond on the farm where she was sure it would live a long, happy life with its horrible assortment of legs. So the soup changed to clam chowder, because at least clams didn’t look so much like spiders.

Then the risotto went down the tubes – apparently, Lisette hadn’t held on to any fiddlehead ferns, so Abigail switched to asparagus. And they were out of rice, so she decided to use pasta instead. It was getting to the point where she half expected them to be out of salt – if she’d known they were that low on some things, she’d have headed into town to grab groceries from her dad’s store. It was so unlike Lisette; the kitchen was normally stocked to bursting with the bounty of the valley.

The cake went in next, needing to cool before it was iced, and that seemed to go all right. They weren’t out of flour, at least, and Abigail put together the bread dough before taking a small break. Cooking was harder than it looked! Peeling potatoes, cutting up onions – which had made her cry, the nerve of them! – she really had been taking advantage of her wife’s willingness to cook. Abigail made the resolution to cook for Lisette more, to show her appreciation.

She prepped the fish and put it in the oven before turning to the bread, getting set to knead it so it would be ready when the fish was done, and both of them ready and waiting for her love when she got home. The dough, however, was sticky and uncooperative, attaching to her hands in elastic globs that wouldn’t come off.

Lisette would be home soon, and she needed to get this bread into the oven, but it wouldn’t let go of her fingers! As she was pondering how to get the half of the dough stuck to her hands stuck back on the rest of the dough, the timer went off for the fish. Crap!

She couldn’t open the oven with her hands like this, let alone take the fish out, but if she left the fish in, it would burn. This wasn’t a situation the Queen of Sauce had ever covered on her show! She was standing in front of the oven, reaching for the handle and stopping, unsure what the best course of action was.

“Crap. Crap crap crap.” Her fingers clenched, and she winced at the squish of dough between her them. “Oh, right! Duh! The sink!” Abigail ran for the sink, awkwardly turning the water on with her wrists just as smoke started to curl up from the oven. “Shit!”

The water was running, but she dashed over to the stove, trying to figure out a way to get the oven open and the fish out with her terrible dough-paw-mitts. She was trying to lever the oven open with her elbow when she heard the front door open. “Abby, I’m back!” There was a momentary pause, and the sound of footsteps coming closer. “What’s burning?”

Abigail knew – she just knew – that Lisette was in the kitchen doorway, watching her with an amused, confused expression. She turned her head, covered in flour, water reaching the top of the sink because she’d forgotten she’d stopped up the drain, and burning fish in the oven, and saw the look of amused concern on her love’s face.

It was concern that made her a little snappy. “Welcome back. Now fucking help me.” She gestured at the oven with her head.

Lisette dashed over, pausing for a moment to turn off the water in the sink. “What . . . is even happening?”

As the farmer opened the oven, waving the smoke away and pulling out the now-blackened fish, Abigail sighed and unplugged the sink to start washing her hands. “I wanted to surprise you?” Lisette gave her an amused look over her shoulder. “You do so much great stuff for me, I wanted to make you a fancy dinner when you got home . . . impress you, you know?” She toweled her wet hands dry and sank into a kitchen chair. “So much for that.”

Looking over the mess of the kitchen, Lisette smiled slightly. “Abby, you don’t need to impress me – we’re already married, for one.” She stepped closer to the purple-haired woman. “Besides, you impress me plenty by being yourself.”

A flush colored Abigail’s cheeks. “You know what I mean.”

“I do.” Lisette leaned against the table. “Look, the cake looks great. So what do you say we go to the saloon for dinner, and,” she ran a finger up Abigail’s arm, “come back here for dessert?”

A shy smile curved Abigail’s lips as she caught Lisette’s hand and laced their fingers together. “That sounds like a plan.”


End file.
